Nickle and Dimed

It’s been a while. Abbi has graduated from Princeton and Adler is a Junior at Georgia Tech. Time sure does fly by.

Ok, so it hasn’t been that long, right?

Abbi is starting to learn that coins have value. She doesn’t understand that a quarter is worth 25 pennies or that a dime is twice a nickel. She just knows that having them is important and equates having them with buying power (getting more of what she wants).

It started with us handing her a handful of coins. She would then ‘buy’ things like a chair for 4 coins, a sneaker for 2 or a pillow on the couch for 3. She would hand us the coins and we would give her the item. She was shopping. As soon as we had all of the coins, she would ask what she could do to get them back. We would give her 3 to pick up the blocks, 4 to put help put her clothes away, and 2 to put the recyclable in the bin.

I’m pretty sure it was was working to our benefit.

Then…

She smartened up. She has caught on to the chores for coins scheme. It doesn’t work as well now. She now wants coins for doing things like finishing her dinner or going to bed. Sneaky, I tell you.

The dinner thing is interesting. We’re having trouble keeping Abbi in her seat and finishing her food. She wants to play and say she isn’t hungry. Of course, 10 minutes after dinner, she wants a snack. I offered her a quarter ‘the biggest coin’ if she would sit still and eat everything on her plate. She is now 25 cents richer.

4 Responses

Our 3.5 year old has to at least stay at the table to tell us what he did during the day even if he decides he isn’t hungry, then he can go play. I put saran wrap on his plate and if he is hungry later he gets that to eat. Maybe that sounds mean but I don’t want him thinking he can get something better by refusing to eat what we make!

I do the same as Sue. Starting at around 2 if I knew she liked what was on her plate (I won’t force her to eat something she doesn’t like) I wrap it and put it away, when she comes back later hungry that is what she gets. After doing that a few times she caught on and almost never eats at least some of her food (I’m not a huge fan of needing to finish your plate).

We used to bribe our picky eater with $$ to try new foods. And now that I think about it, I don’t think that helped to expand his list of “approved” foods at all. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

We also use the “save it for later” method. It took us a while, but the stack of half finished dinners overflowing from the fridge finally made us realize our preschooler simply doesn’t want to eat after about 4pm. Now she has to eat three bites of veggies and the protein (cause breakfasts and lunches tend to be high carb in our family). Talking to her about food balance actually made a bigger difference for us than bribery.

Same 4year old, looking at a dollar bill in the car: “Mommy, why do people give me stuff for thie piece of paper?”

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